The Changing Character of War

The Royal United Services Institute of Victoria is pleased to present: Colonel (Rtd) Richard Iron, CMG, OBE Visiting Fellow at Oxford University
Entrance fee: $10.00

Colonel Richard Iron was originally commissioned in 1975, with early service in Germany, Kenya and the Falkland Islands. He served three years in the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces and several tours in Northern Ireland. He attended both the British and US Army staff colleges.

He subsequently commanded 1st Battalion of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment, a mechanised infantry battalion, serving in Bosnia and Macedonia/Kosovo. During two years as an instructor at the UK’s joint staff college he was responsible for development of campaigning concepts. He was subsequently responsible for development of British Army doctrine, including its capstone Army Doctrine Publication Land Operations. In this latter post he also deployed to the Coalition Land Component HQ in Kuwait in 2002-03, where he led a UK/US planning team for the invasion of Iraq. He was also responsible for the British Army’s subsequent analysis of the preparation for and execution of that invasion.

He has since served as the UK’s National Liaison Representative to NATO’s Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia. For six years he led the development of land doctrine in NATO, including counter-insurgency doctrine. In addition, he was an expert military witness for the prosecution in the Sierra Leone War Crimes trials, where he worked with members of various guerrilla groups and gained valuable insight to the internal dynamic of such groups.

From December 2007 to November 2008 he served as the Chief Mentor to the Basra Operations Commander in Iraq, and commander of the British Advisor Team to the Basra Operations Command. In this appointment he was largely responsible for development and implementation of the Iraqi counter-insurgency plan for Basra, including Operation Charge of the Knights. He also developed the security plan for the Iraq/Iran border through engagement with the Marsh Arabs.

He contributed to and edited the book British Generals in Blair’s Wars (Ashgate, 2013) and is currently working on a military history of the Sierra Leone War 1991-2002.

Richard Iron is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Changing Character of War (CCW) Programme at the University of Oxford.

The Oxford CCW Programme is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of war and armed conflict. It conducts research on a wide range of issues pertaining to the history of war in the modern period, and seeks to be ‘policy-relevant’ to more recent conflicts through elucidation, explication and education. In 2013-14, its research priorities are the changing relationship between war and the state, war in a connected world, conventional and unconventional warfare, civilians in war, the history of the laws of war and the moral dimensions of war.

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